Poppies charm and disarm with their bold beauty: one that belies the complex reality of how humans have used the potent and often lethal chemicals they hold. They are a symbol of remembrance of wartime sacrifice and as the source of the deadly heroin that constitutes Afghanistan's main export (albeit, obviously a black market) & funding sources for the Taliban and other extremist groups in the region. The poppy is so many things to so many people; it can't help but make a compelling and fascinating subject.

N.B.: I created this in tandem with the game-changing digital painting app, Procreate, on the iPad. The intuitiveness of the interface and the degree of control that one has over the tools within the app is as close to real painting and illustration, as I have ever encountered. I would go so far as to say that for digital painting, it highly exceeds Adobe Photoshop, and it has a smaller learning curve than Corel Draw. If you are serious about illustration and find most digital tools to be a useful but tedious necessity, I can't recommend it enough for digital painting. You still will need Adobe CC to manipulate your work for professional use, but conveniently, you can easily export to psd from the app.